Frozen Brand New Radio

Bill -VA3WTB

Mike, the M model does not need to be connected by a lan cable in order to work. You may try and unpluging that lan cable and see how it works. It will only need the cable to the network for updating.
If that does not solve the problem, then RF is effecting the radio another way. Anything connected to the radio can be an antenna.

Holger Hannemann

Hi Mick
You never said when your display freezes. Is that during operation or during boot/start-up process? If during start-up it wouldn't be a RFI issue but more likely a network problem. If the radios comes up just fine when switched on without Ethernet connection it would confirm this. If so a reset of your router may solve the issue.

I had similar problems with my 6600M during start-up . It was an issue with assigning the IP addresses and solved by router reset.

If the problem happens while operating you may check for RFI issues, common mode etc.

73 Holger, ZL3IO

Mick

Thanks Holger,
Actually you're right on the money.
The network culprit and freeze up during start up was my network connection.
I had the radio and the laptop in my shack going to a range extender to my WIFI
router in the living room. The extender was dying, I reset it and it connected once.
Then I tried to go in the extender to set a password and could not get in.
So, I hit the reset button and it never connected to my router again.
It's now in it's resting place in the trash can.
Radio works fine, I just have a direct connect to my laptop for now.
I put a ferrite on the Ethernet cable to the radio and separated all the cords
instead of having them wrapped together under my desk and now there is no freeze up
or any other problems with RFI.
Thanks all for your help!!! 

KL4QG

Glad it worked out

Mike-VA3MW

Glad you got it fixed.

We do get a lot of power supply problems with all types of power supplies.  Flex radios require 25A or better.

The one test you need to do is have the radio transmitting in a constant carrier mode (like FM) into a Dummy Load.  Now, we a voltmeter you trust to measure the voltage on the back of the radio and make sure it is about 13.5V or higher.  Again, while transmitting.

Since the radio draws over 20amp on TX, imagine if you had 0.1 ohm resistance somewhere between the power supply and the radio.  How much voltage do you think you could lose?  

I can give you the answer if you wish, but give it some thought. 

73

Mark_WS7M

Hi Mick,

Sounds like you got it sorted.  I will say that you would be best to hardwire your radio to your router using shield network cable and perhaps some RFI cores on the cable ends for good measure.

A vast majority of "strange" issues with Flex Radios have been resolve with better networking.

Another option would be to do a fiber link between where your radio is and your router.  More expensive, more pieces to be buy but the benefits are zero RFI pickup on the fiber cable which can be very long.  And isolation from any kind of spike that might come over ethernet.

I have my radio and its switch connected via fiber just for safety sake.

Mark - WS7M